The parlor car had been totaled, ravaged by what looked like a terrible struggle. White tablecloths had been tossed about, some bearing scorch marks where they lay smoldering in the aisle or haphazardly draped over what few surfaces remained upright.
Seats and tables had been ripped from their metal casings and upheaved, tossed clear across the car and left overturned where they landed. The rails beneath the car screeched by through massive holes that had been blown in the floor. Every tall viewing window was shattered.
The wind whipped through the remains of the car, sending Chloe’s hair flying. She roughly brushed it out of her eyes and tried to get a handle on what it was she was seeing.
Remnants of magic crackled along the metal in the room. Sparks ignited dangerously from torn wiring, and the smell of sickly sweet alcohol wafted toward her despite the car’s exposure to the elements. The bar was still standing, but its store of alcohol seemed to have been destroyed in some explosion.
It was cold, too. The pine trees had grown taller and thicker and the buildings more sparse. The train had turned away from the coast and was now inland at a higher elevation.
Chloe clenched her teeth tightly and lurched forward, grabbing on to whatever stable seat or table remains she could manage in order to make her way across the car’s Swiss-cheesed remains. Off-handedly, she realized she was now grateful the antique parlor car had been replaced. It would have been destroyed otherwise. By what, she didn’t know, but she was guessing it had something to do with the werewolf and vampire now duking it out in her room.
She was halfway across the car when the doors at the other end slid open. Chloe stopped.
A second vampire stepped through the doors toward her, pulling Chloe’s stomach into her throat and stilling the air in her lungs. She froze, eyes wide, body held in terror.
“Chloe, run!” came a sudden command from behind the vampire. It was a female voice.
The vampire bared his fangs, growled a few magic words, and a spell rent the air, hurtling toward Chloe with wicked intent. Chloe ducked, knowing it would do no good. Magic didn’t work that way. It was like a heat-seeking missile; there was no ducking.
Just before the spell would have struck her and she was sensing the wave rising and ready to crash, there was a new presence beside her. It was a solid, larger than life, cold, hard and cruel kind of force – and she recognized it at once. This new presence brought the offending spell to a sudden, inarguable stop.
Jason shielded her, stepping in front of her to raise his arm like a weapon. Sparkling, whirling, impossible magic filled the already destroyed car.
There was a roar of rage or pain, and Chloe closed her eyes as two opposing forces turned the air to tiny razor-sharp, erratic waves that abraded her nerve endings like nails on a chalkboard.
An explosion came next. It reminded Chloe of a grill alighting on an entire bottle of lighter fluid. She could feel the heat of a fire against her skin, and she backpedalled, turning her face away from the heat source.
A few seconds later, the magic lifted, the crackling of the fire ceased, and Chloe opened her eyes. Across the car, the vampire who had cast a spell on her was no longer there. Instead, a tall woman stood alone over the last of a pile of ash as the vampire’s remains were lifted on a fierce wind.
The train bucked and rocketed, going far faster than Chloe knew it was meant to go. The woman, an African American with long, thick wavy hair and plump red lips seemed as familiar to Chloe as had the werewolf back in her room. This woman was a witch; that much Chloe could sense right away. The witch had her palms braced against the doorway she stood in, trying to maintain her balance as the train went careening out of control.
“Take my hand.”
Chloe looked up.
The Warlock King’s fierce green eyes drew her gaze and held it fast. It burned through her, searing her soul like a brand. “Chloe, take my hand,” he commanded again, a touch more gently, but also a touch more urgently.
Chloe looked down at his offered hand. All of her life-long running flashed before her mind. Every time she’d turned away, ignored her hunger and emptiness, and moved on, it had been this right here that she was avoiding. This ultimate moment of trust.
Of surrender.
But the world was falling apart, and vampires had just attacked her, and the train was about to crash, and there were witches and warlocks and werewolves all around her. Oh my.
She raised her hand, prepared at last to place it into his.
“No, Chloe!” came Jason’s voice again, this time raised from across the car. Chloe turned. A second Jason, identical to the first, stood behind the witch in the doorway.
The witch turned to look up at the man behind her. Her eyes widened and her expression became a lot more uncertain than it had been a moment before. She looked from Jason to Jason, as did Chloe, and then the two women looked at each other.
“Chloe,” said Jason again. She looked up at him beside her, her hair whipping around her face, her pulse painful in her chest.
“Trust me and take my hand,” he urged. “Please.”
The train bucked again, turned a sudden and hard left, and everyone in the car went flying. Chloe cried out as she made contact with some pointed metal bit sticking out from what used to be the bottom of an upturned table. She felt and heard a sickening crack, and then tumbled to the pockmarked floor, pain etching up and down her right side like a map of electrified neurons.
Magic once more filled the air, lightning splitting the atmosphere where none should exist. Chloe rolled over and raised her head to peer down the length of the car. The witch, too, had been thrown. She now lay unconscious at the foot of the bar, which was still intact. Chloe had no idea whether or not she was alive.
At the center of the car, not far from the witch’s fallen form, two identical Jason Alberich’s held one another by the throat. One managed to throw the other loose, and a dark spell followed after him. But the spell fizzled out of existence moments before it would have reached its mark.
A second later, the two warlocks were in hand-to-hand combat once more. The car was heating up with spent magic, by its lightning-hot expulsion in the runaway train.
Chloe hissed and groaned as the metal wheels screamed in protest against their captive railings and the car again bucked beneath her. Whatever ribs she’d broken rubbed ruthlessly against one another and the tissue surrounding them. She gritted her teeth, wondering about internal bleeding. She also wondered why there were two Jasons. Distractedly, she wondered whom the “master” was that had sent vampires after her and why he would think her blood tasted like falling stars.
She was losing it. The pain was getting to her – it all was.
“No spell you cast on me will work, warlock. I am you.”
Chloe turned her attention back to the fighting Jasons. One of them now stood apart from the other, his lip bleeding, and his hair disheveled. “And anything you try to cast on yourself, I can just as easily negate,” he continued. He shook his head, smiling a bloody, wicked, and admittedly charismatic smile. It was one of those that gave you chills and heated you up simultaneously. He shook his head. “You’ve no hope of winning.”
Chloe could feel the darkness pouring off both warlocks. They were each wrapped in magic, they were both impossibly powerful, and they looked exactly the same. But their auras were different. The one who had just spoken was filled with hatred, with resentment, with cold and dark and bitterness. He was the very essence of a warlock: Cunning and ruthless, potent and twisted.
The other was filled with all of these things as well… and something that stood apart from these things. It felt like a page you’ve just noticed at the end of a book, accidentally stuck to the page before it.
This was Jason. The real Jason. This was her Jason.
Jason turned to face her then, his expression stark and serious. He’d come to some sort of decision; Chloe sensed the change at once. “Chloe, take my magic,” he told her. “Take it from me and use it to t
ransport us off the train!”
The world rumbled. Something up ahead, in some car closer to the engine, broke away. It rended and screamed and bumped, and everything was off-kilter now. Doom was impending.
Chloe looked from Jason to his copy and noticed the sudden look of apprehension on the duplicate’s face.
It was all the proof Chloe needed.
She rose, ignoring the agony the movement released in her side, and met Jason halfway as he, in turn, knelt. They grasped hands just as Jason’s copy rushed toward them.
Chloe’s world exploded.
Chapter Sixteen
It was too much. It was so much more than she’d meant to take. She couldn’t stop it. It was like a dam breaking. She was drowning in a fast-flowing flood of magic that enveloped her, consumed her, killing and resurrecting her a thousand times.
I can’t breathe, she thought.
And then she was breathing. And then she was dying again. An eternity of time passed through her body and spirit like a rush of pixie dust and black holes. She was floating in that sea, weightless but crushed.
“Now!” Jason gasped.
Chloe slammed back into the real world, a goddess among mere mortals, a superhero among humans. She rose fluidly to her feet, her hair crackling and standing on end, her eyes glowing like backlit aquamarines. She cast the spell without ever having cast it before. She didn’t need words or motion; she needed only the thought of wanting it to be done – and it was done.
“No!!!” another bellowed. But it was too late.
Time and spaced warped, churning the colors of the rainbow into one another, acting like a blender on quantum mechanics. Chloe wasn’t certain whether she was still touching Jason. She wasn’t certain of anything but the incredible magic flowing through her veins.
That magic changed her down to her core, mending all that was broken, filling all that had been empty. Then it sucked her up like a massive vacuum, sent her speeding through unknown dimensions, and left her with her feet firmly planted in a room filled with light.
The cacophony of the runaway train faded to nothing. There was no movement. All was quiet.
Chloe shielded her eyes as the light faded into shades of normalcy. She lowered her arm and looked around.
She was in an enormous bedchamber. A four-poster king sized bed covered in dark, satiny sheets and furs loomed nearby, its head against one wall. The posts were thick, intricate combinations of carved wood and welded metals, including what appeared to be gold. The design was so detailed, it seemed immediately impossible. Magic, she thought. Only magic could make that.
Her boots rested atop a thick black rug with deep, soft pile that made her feel as if she were standing on a cloud. Again.
The floor of the chamber was composed of polished marble with veins of gold and platinum winding throughout. It stretched the length of ten normal sized bedrooms. The ceiling was vaulted marble. The walls were blank, allowing the bass relief designs to be revealed, works of art in and of themselves. A carved obsidian statue of a curvaceous woman in profile stood beside the room’s single window. The window itself was draped in lush, expensive curtains of black, white, and gold.
Against the opposite wall to the bed was a lit fireplace, and if the growing warmth in the room were any indication, it had leapt to life just as she appeared in the room.
Chloe was trembling. Little by little, she realized she could hear the sound of her own ragged breathing. She looked down at her empty hands and blinked. Something was missing.
Someone.
“Jason!” she cried, gasping the name in sudden, horrible awareness.
“Chloe.” It was merely a whisper. She spun toward the voice. Small sounds of movement were coming from the other side of the bed.
She rushed around the bed to find Jason’s normally strong body lying on the cold, hard floor, limp and defenseless. She could feel almost nothing coming from him – no strength. No magic.
And she knew he was barely alive.
What have I done?
She knelt beside him and used the magic he’d given her to infuse her own arms with more superhuman strength. She grasped him under his arms, feeling the ample musculature beneath the black material of his clothing as she helped him to his feet and moved him onto the bed. He grunted in what was either pain or weakness or both and braced himself against the black silk-covered mattress. Chloe caught a faint whiff of after-shave and soap as he lay atop it.
She stood transfixed, watching each flex and release of his graceful body until he finally let go and relaxed against the pillows, one well-muscled leg bent, his boots carelessly digging into the bedding.
Chloe distractedly pulled one of the blankets over as much of his body as she could and then straightened, her mind spinning. What is wrong with him? What did I do? What happened? What if he dies?
She stepped back, running her hands through her hair to fist them against her scalp. What was she supposed to do in this kind of situation? Had this ever happened to him before?
She closed her eyes, trying to remember exactly what had occurred on the train. She saw herself reaching out. She felt Jason’s fingers close over her own.
She opened her eyes. I’m a vacuum, she thought.
In allowing him to transfer his power to her, she’d somehow inadvertently taken all of his magic. She truly hadn’t meant to do it. She hadn’t even tried. But she must have been so empty before, and she was one of the original 28…. Maybe they took magic differently?
She could feel that magic speeding through her system now, a rushing river of dark possibility, just waiting to be tapped.
Would he survive being drained completely? Have I just killed the Warlock King?
Soft laughter forced her to go still. She zeroed in on Jason’s form on the bed.
“I’ll live, Stardust.”
Again, it was merely a whisper, and she’d barely seen his lips move, but as he slipped into a deep, restorative sleep, her sensitive self clearly caught the assurance he hurled at her as a last ditch effort to calm her fears. The last of his consciousness dropped away, leaving him breathing softly.
He’s vulnerable.
Chloe remained where she was, held fast by the image of Jason Alberich – sleeping. Her eyes followed the lines of his scruff-covered chin, the strong line of his neck and broad shoulders, the slightly cruel upturn of the corner of his mouth. He was dangerously beautiful when he was awake. When he was asleep, he seemed like… a fallen angel, punished for something deliciously wicked he’d done in some other realm where boring, straight-laced deities prudishly judged and harshly sentenced.
They’d cut off the dark angel’s sable wings and hurled him down to the planet.
And now he was at her mercy.
Chloe shuddered as some kind of chill rushed through her. She hugged herself and stepped back, licking her lips. Her skin felt strange beneath her own touch. It felt taut and sensitive, as if the power that rested beneath its surface were pushing to get out. Her eyes felt hot in her head and colors seem to have shifted a few shades clockwise on the color wheel. Everything was different. She’d gone from Akyri to warlock in the space of a heartbeat, and not just any warlock….
She had the urge to let loose with what she’d unwittingly collected. She wanted to lash out, to cast a spell on absolutely everything in the room. It was difficult to tamp the desire down – much more difficult than she could have imagined.
I can do anything.
Hell, she could even raise the dead. I should help that witch, she thought suddenly. She could go back and help the witch she’d left on the train. The gods only knew what was happening to the woman now. Was she even alive?
It was within a warlock’s abilities to resurrect the fallen, and Chloe could feel that magic inside of her now. I have to go back, she told herself, despite the danger she knew she would be heading straight into.
If she’d been the one left behind, she would hope against hopes that someone with the ability to save h
er would come back for her. It was the golden rule for a reason.
But as Chloe made up her mind and willed herself to transport back to the train, she realized her mistake. Jason was unconscious, and without him to focus the spell, his magic was as wild and chaotic as entropy itself.
A tendril of Jason’s stolen power whipped out from her like an aura whiplash and slammed into the nearest object. The obsidian statue of the curvaceous woman burst like a bomb, millions of tiny black slivers of stone sailing outward in a shimmering star of razor sharp danger.
Chloe squealed, turned away from the mess, and felt some of the shards bump into the backs of her legs and arms. The tinkling sound of the statue’s shattering lessened and finally stopped. Chloe’s heart sank.
With guilty tentativeness, she turned back around and surveyed what she knew was going to be a terrible mess. “Crap.”
But as her gaze slid across the destroyed remains of what had been a beautiful work of art, a few of the broken pieces began to wiggle where they lay on the floor. Chloe frowned. The shards of obsidian trembled. Then, one by one, they started to scrape back across the ground they’d skittered over.
Chloe’s eyes widened.
Suddenly the shards leapt into the air, circled around each other in a shimmering mini-tornado, and pulled together with a popping sound.
A second later, the statue stood once more whole and unharmed where it had rested before her failed attempt at spell casting.
“Niiiiice,” Chloe whispered, realizing that the house must have some kind of self-repairing charm on it.
“So then… where am I, exactly?” she asked the space around her. She had a feeling she already knew the answer. If the décor of this room alone was anything like its master….
With one last long look at the unconscious Warlock King, Chloe made her way across the room to the tall arched doorway and out into the hall beyond.
A few full minutes later, a very impressed Chloe Septeran stepped out into the main sitting room of the mansion.
It was opulently furnished. Tapestries adorned the walls, and a massive marble hearth against the far wall leapt to fiery life as she entered. She jumped a little, quickly remembered that the fireplace in Jason’s room had done the same, and then continued into the room.